Pompey: The men who scored four or more in a game

Macaulay Daley

What we learnt from Pompey’s defeat at Scunthorpe

Today marks 80 years since Joe Payne scored 10 goals in a game for Luton Town in a 12-0 win over Bristol Rovers – a Football League record that still stands.

Various players over the years have tried and failed to beat Payne’s remarkable feat, which looks set to stand the test of time.

On the anniversary of his goalscoring achievement, we look at whether any Pompey players have ever come close to matching Payne’s record...

In the middle of the Second World War, Andy Black scored eight goals as he came within two goals of matching Payne’s feat.

Pompey were playing Clapton Orient in the London War League, and the Scotsman scored half of their goals in a 16-1 win.

It capped a remarkable 1941-42 campaign for Black, who scored 41 goals in just 24 league appearances.

The season before that, in January 1941, Bert Barlow scored six for Pompey in a 10-2 thrashing of Bournemouth in the South Regional League.

Back in 1912, just one year after Payne was born, Harry Taylor scored six of Pompey’s seven goals, in a 7-0 win over Chesham in Southern League division two.

Post-war attempts at breaking the record haven’t been as successful as they were before the war began.

Peter Harris holds Pompey’s post-war goals in a game record, scoring all five in a 5-2 thrashing of Aston Villa in 1958, back in the old division one.

More recently, Guy Whittingham scored four goals twice in the early nineties. In 1991, the former Pompey boss scored four goals in a 5-1 win over Bournemouth at Fratton Park in the FA Cup.

In the first season of the newly-formed division one in 1992, Whittingham repeated the trick, as Bristol Rovers were thumped 4-1 on Boxing Day.

The last Pompey player to score more than three in a game was back in 2004. On the final day of the season against Middlesbrough, Yakubu Aiyegbeni scored four in a 5-1 win in front of the Fratton faithful.